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DETROIT—Something about Comerica Park brings out the very best in Blue Jays right-hander Aaron Sanchez.

Despite the obvious damage inflicted upon Comerica’s playing surface by Lars Ulrich and his heavy metal band Metallica just two days earlier, Sanchez dialed up another banner performance in Motown, beating the Tigers 7-2 in their first game after the all-star break.

The area where the Metallica stage had been set up in centre field featured discoloured, dead grass from straightaway left to straightaway right, forcing the grounds crew to work all afternoon to prepare the field. The game itself had been in doubt, but only early batting practice for the Jays was cancelled.

Early on it was a pitchers’ duel between Sanchez and Justin Verlander, with no runs scored through four innings. But leading off the fifth, Steve Pearce cracked a deep home run to left-centre field. Kevin Pillar reached on a two-base error when J.D. Martinez dropped a line drive down the right-field line. Jose Bautista cashed him in with a sacrifice fly deep to the Metallica-scarred outfield.

“Now’s the time when we’re not in any position to wait around,” Pearce said. “We have to make our move, and hopefully today’s the start of it. It was definitely good (to hit the homer). The most important thing is, we got the win. We need to capitalize. Today’s over. We need to go out and do it again tomorrow.”

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Sanchez found himself in trouble in the bottom of the fifth despite doing nothing different than usual, producing ground balls.

Jose Iglesias led off with a single into the hole at short. Alex Presley sliced a ground-ball single. With runners on the corners, Alex Avila lined out to third baseman Josh Donaldson, who fired a low throw to Justin Smoak at first, trying to double up the runner. The ball bounced away with Iglesias trotting home. Sanchez escaped further damage with a double play off a ground ball by Miguel Cabrera.

“A lot of weak contact,” Sanchez observed. “I felt like at the beginning I was still trying to find the zone a little bit with my release point. For the first couple of innings, I kind of got my pitch count up. Then I felt like I settled down, got in the groove of things and got through the sixth.”

The Jays added two runs, on a bases-loaded walk to Kevin Pillar in the sixth and a solo homer by Jose Bautista in the seventh, his 15th of the year. He now has 740 RBIs as a Jay, tying George Bell for third all-time. The Jays tacked on three more against the Tigers bullpen in the eighth, highlighted by a Donaldson two-run single.

In his first legitimate start back after a third stint on the DL with a middle finger injury on his right hand, Sanchez worked six innings, allowing just the one unearned run on seven hits with two walks and four strikeouts. Of the 20 balls in play allowed by Sanchez, 10 were ground balls, six fly balls and four line drives. Grounders is what Sanchez does best, keyed by a darting two-seam fastball.

“I didn’t use many curveballs,” Sanchez said. “I think for me, right now, it’s just reps. The more reps I get the more comfortable I get, the better I’ll be.”

While Friday’s outing was good, it was not anywhere close to the dominance he showed over the Tigers on June 7, 2016, his last time at Comerica. In an eventual 3-2 loss in 10 innings last year, Sanchez allowed one hit through the first eight innings with a walk and 12 strikeouts. Of the 24 outs through eight, there were 11 grounders and one line drive plus the dozen K’s. Nursing a 2-0 lead, he went out for the ninth and gave up a single and a double, replaced by Roberto Osuna. The Jays lost 3-2, but Sanchez was brilliant, requiring just 98 pitches into the ninth.

“I think it depends how you feel that day when you get to the yard,” Sanchez said. “There’s days where I’ve felt not so right and pitched really well, and there’s days like Houston. I don’t put too much thought in that. At the end of the day, it’s executing pitches and make sure you get outs. I was able to get a lot of outs today.”

The Jays can only dream of getting back into the wild-card race if the entire five-man starting rotation begins to perform as advertised. This game was a start.

“That’s kind of the plan,” Sanchez said. “We had such a disaster of a first half in terms of guys getting down, not playing our best. Today, for us, it’s like a new season.”

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